Volcano Rescue Effort Mounts

Avalanche Alert Issued In Colombia

Aid poured into stricken Colombia Friday and rescue efforts intensified in the wake of the volcano eruption that claimed an estimated 20,000 lives.

The Nevado del Ruiz volcano continued to rumble and belch smoke and the ground shuddered, causing more terror as workers hurried to dump bodies into mass graves to prevent disease.

The Caldas state government warned that the sputtering volcano could loosen a huge chunk of ice and trigger a major avalanche.

``This is to alert the residents of the riverside zones of the Molino, Claro and Chinchina Rivers to take security measures,`` the alert said.

``There is the potential danger of a new avalanche because a huge block of ice is about to fall off.``

A spokesman for Colombia`s Defense Department said President Belisario Betancur, who toured the devastated area Friday, and members of the armed forces would donate a day`s salary to the relief efforts. It was not immediately known how much money would be raised through their donations.

Twelve U.S. helicopters were sent to assist Colombian Civil Defense authorities in locating and evacuating survivors. A U.S. volcano expert was dispatched to help assess the behavior of the 17,716-foot Nevado del Ruiz, according to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.

France was sending dogs trained to sniff out survivors, along with other aid.

Help was coming from West Germany, Britain and Japan as well as from the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations.

Nevado del Ruiz, about 100 miles west-northwest of Bogota, erupted late Wednesday, unleashing a wall of mud and melted snow that smashed into downslope areas early Thursday.

The slide divided into three river courses, geologists said. One part virtually wiped out Armero, which had been a town of 50,000 people. The other parts flooded several other towns.

In scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of Mt. St. Helens` 1980 eruption in Washington state, rescue workers searched for bodies in fields of mud and gave medical assistance to mud-caked survivors.

Sometimes the search was easy. Reports from Armero told of bodies lying on the surface or hands protruding from the mud.

One man stood buried up to his neck by mud, his legs pinned by a body 4 feet below the surface, before being pulled out alive.

Another man, his foot crushed, lay for 24 hours atop the bodies of his three children. He and his pregnant wife survived.

Buried houses, stranded vehicles and dead cattle littered the desolate landscape, and roads were cut by flooded rivers and mudslides, making many areas accessible only by helicopter.

Red Cross officials said it probably would be necessary to declare Armero ``campo santo,`` or ``holy ground,`` allowing many of the dead to remain buried where they are.

Dr. Rueda Montana, president of the Colombian Red Cross, said, ``In places, it (the mud) is 8 meters deep (about 26 feet) and apart from those killed, there are very many injured among the survivors.``

About 10,000 injured, many in shredded nightclothes, were being flown in helicopters to four hastily constructed tent hospitals near the towns of Mariquita, Lerida and Guayabal, Civil Defense officials said.

Red Cross officials said thousands of survivors stranded in trees and in the mountains had not eaten or slept since the disaster. Many had to be lifted out by ropes because the rescue helicopters could not land in the thick mud.

Walter Cotte of the Red Cross said many of the dead were buried in mass graves without attempts at identification because rescue workers had neither the means nor the time to take photographs or fingerprints.

``It will be impossible to identify many of the dead,`` he said. ``In fact, many bodies won`t ever be recovered because they`re lost in the mud.``

Civil Defense spokeswoman Aura de Leyva said, ``We have to bury the dead quickly or there will be an epidemic.``

A Civil Defense official in Bogota estimated the death toll at 20,000, with 5,000 more missing. The same death estimate came from the Red Cross. Health Minister Rafael de Zubiria, in giving the government`s first official figures, put the death toll at 17,000 to 20,000.

``There may be more, especially killed,`` said Hugo Guerrero, search snd rescue chief for the Colombian Civil Defense. He said the hardest-hit towns after Armero were Mariquita, Chinchina, Lerida and Libano. The Civil Defense operation involves about 2,000 workers, Guerrero said.

The Red Cross estimated that 50,000 people were homeless.

Josie Shumake, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy here, said no U.S. citizens were known to be among those killed, injured or missing because of the eruption.

Following a request from the Colombian government, she said, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) sent 12 helicopters from Panama to assist in rescue efforts.